The Jordan Harbinger Show - 267: Brian Grazer | The Art of Human Connection

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Brian Grazer (@BrianGrazer) is an Academy Award-winning producer whose films and TV shows have been nominated for 45 Academy Awards and 196 Emmys. He is the author of Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection. What We Discuss with Brian Grazer: What imposter syndrome looks like when you're at the top of the Hollywood game. How Brian turned a childhood learning disability into a superpower. Why being called a loser by Harvey Weinstein at the 1996 Academy Awards doesn't Brian hurt so much these days. How Brian networked himself up from legal clerk at Warner Bros. to one of Hollywood's most respected producers. Why Brian values curiosity over IQ. And much more… Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/267 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! On No Dumb Questions, a science guy from the deep south (Destin of Smarter Every Day) and a humanities guy from the wild west (Matt Whitman of The Ten Minute Bible Hour) discuss deep questions with varying levels of maturity. Give No Dumb Questions a listen here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Today on the show, Brian Grazer, he co-founded Imagine Entertainment along with Ron Howard. Over the years, the films and TV shows he's been involved with have been nominated for a total of 43 Academy Awards and 100,000. 131 Emmys. The films they produced over at Imagine have grossed over $13 billion, which is just bananas. But aside from success in film, movies, and television, Brian is an incredibly curious person. For the past 30 years, he's made it his mission to meet a new person every week or so and sit down with them for a very specific curiosity conversation. Much like myself, Brian started

off as a shy kid and had to work around his anxiety and a learning disability to become one of the most iconic folks in the film industry. He then networked his way from courier in a closet all the way to the peak of Hollywood. And of course, I'm getting the lowdown on how he networks and builds relationships both back in the day and even now that he's at the top of the game. Brian is a riot, and this conversation was really fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And not only is Brian talking networking, but I'm doing the same. Six-minute networking. It's how I got guys like Brian on the show. It's how I get every guest on the show. It's a networking course for you that I've created And it's free. It's over at Jordanharbinger.com slash course.

And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course in the newsletter. So come join us, and you'll be in great company. All right, here's Brian Grazer. I was mentioning that we have sort of a weird start because we're both Catholic Jews who almost joined the Freemasons and, like, went through the law school route. And that sort of circles back to the mastery idea because I think part of that for me comes up as trying to make up for lost time. because one thing that really struck me when I read the curiosity book was I also couldn't look at the teacher or anyone else when I was a kid. Why couldn't you? I couldn't pay attention in class.

Right. I was having a really hard time. I still feel that sometimes. So I did the look away, right? The look down or look away. Yes. And that created this social anxiety that as I had as a kid was worse. They fed each other.

Yeah. Yes. Because it's like you can't get over social anxiety when you can't look at someone and you're doing this when you're talking to them. It's weird. It just makes it worse because you know you're being weird. Exactly. It's sort of walking, even today, going to a party, not feeling like you have enough confidence to go in there with confidence.

It's all that stuff. Yeah, of course. And I think for me, I still feel in some ways like I'm faking it. I wonder if you feel the same way. I don't. But Ron Howard, my partner, my symbiotic mate. Hetero life partner? Hetero life partner.

He won Oscars for a beautiful mind. Yeah. Okay, so we'd been up for winning Oscars before. We didn't win. Now we actually won. And we're sitting in the waiting, this little waiting area to go in front of like a bank of 300 journalists and photographers. And he's like getting a stomachache. We already won.

He goes, oh, man, I have a stomach ache. It's usually me. He goes, I have a stomachache. He said, do you have anything? I said, I have these tums. So I handed him these tums. He ate the tums. He felt like I had helped a little bit.

He goes, wow, thanks. He said, do you think anyone will ever find us out? And I go, you've got to be kidding. We're geniuses. Are you crazy? Here's again evidence that we know. We don't not know. We absolutely know.

So I don't think that ever. But I look at it kind of like this. I have extreme optimism, hope, and enthusiasm on one hand. I feel like I do tap into my understanding. internal heartbeat of what that truth is. And that truth is really, turns out to be like the most valuable commodity in any conversation. But on the other hand, even though I've got this whole thing of like, I will make this work out, will it into working out, the hundred movies that I produced, I do also think like, what's going to go wrong? I don't know what we should say that.

You can say whatever you want. Yeah. I know there's going to be a bunch of things that go wrong. Always a bunch of things that are going to go wrong. I have, even though I have high expectations on the result, I think the journey is going to be fraught with unpredictable problems. I know you're a pretty hands-on producer by your own account. I wonder, are you the one that normally yells at people or is it Ron? Because it's hard to imagine Ron Howard being like, you dumb up best shit. You know, he's like a little opie, right? But now is a grown super accomplished man. It's still like, I can't break that image. Yeah. Okay. So he doesn't yell at people. Yeah, no surprise. I mean, he got mad one. You know,

know like this is 35 years he got him once at an actor he said something like god damn it yeah you know gosh darn it yeah he did off my set it was something like that it was a really crabby yeah old character actor a star in his own in his own right right he just kept kind of like pushing on ron you know and eventually ron jo's gosh darn it you know you're off and he he let him go which was pretty amazing Bring that coffee in here. Yeah, this is a real life. Hot set, hot set, pal. All right, thanks.

Okay. Try you yell at them right in front of you? That's so Hollywood, though, right? Yeah. Well, I never yelled at people. I don't yell at people. No? That's worse then.

You make them feel bad, and then they know they've done wrong. Because if you yell at someone, they're like, wow, geez. But if you just say, I'm disappointed in you, I thought better. I thought I expected more. Then they're like, shit, I'm such a piece. Yeah. Yeah. I had a boss that yelled all the time.

and me yelled like all of the time and I just saw just the physics work against him you know it's I was like 22 and I'd watch his man yet Edgar yell at people if he's not yelling at me he's yelling at someone else and I'd look at people looking at me like for was this going to end what's that going on with this guy oh yeah so I just thought I don't want that to happen to me so I don't I get very wound up, but I don't show the person like that. So internally, you're like super pissed off, but externally you're going to deal with it. Yeah. I wonder, you know, if you feel like human connection and your quest kind of for human connection,

maybe saved you from a life that you thought you were going to have because you have a learning disability, right? Yes. But that was undiagnosed as a kid. Correct. So movies are a good escape. But I wonder if being creative is kind of like, well, I'm not good at sitting down and reading all this stuff. So maybe a creative pursuit rescues me from a life of like breaking rocks,

which isn't, we're not built for that, man, especially you. Yeah. Well, I think this. I think that what I did is I turned a disability into a superpower. So first, you've, the disability produces a lot of shame. A disability is a disability. And so it's hard. If you just keep, you know, fighting for that little bit of oxygen out in the middle of the ocean, you'll get it. And you will then use that bit of oxygen to animate powers inside of you that you didn't think existed. It creates a resource, you know, creates a person that's resourceful. Like you were doing right then. You were fixing all of these things.

There was what, not a SIM card? Yeah, there's no SD card. There's no SD card. There was, which is even worse. That's not even Mark's fault. I don't want to see you blow up or anything, but you didn't. But you actually found the problem. You isolate the problem, then you fix the problem.

And so similarly, I can do the same thing with stories and movies. Yeah. You know, I can get my hands on the carburetor and fix the engine. Yeah. But there's more to that story, of course, because you were nominated for 43 Academy Awards, 131 Emmys. I don't think I'm getting nominated. 196. Well, geez, you got to update your Wikipedia, man.

Yeah, I mean, we've been wanting to meet for two years. You're right. Oh, was it in the Wikipedia? That's probably where I got that. I assume. Oh, shoot. Yeah. You're never going to be able to change that. They're going to fight your tooth and nail. You're trying to change your Wikipedia? Good Lord. I think I'm going to, yeah, I have to put some effort into this. Yeah, don't have Will do it. It'll never get done. Wow. Poor Will.

It's funny show. I love that. You're right. That's right. Unintentionally funny show, yeah. You know, the best award story, I was going to save this for later, but the best award story might be the one that you actually didn't get for brave heart. Can you tell me about that? Okay, sure. Ridiculous. So what happened is I had this opportunity, I read a 12-page outline written by the astronaut Jim Lovell on a

failed journey to go to the moon, and it was called Apollo 13. I ended buying get the rights to this failed journey, which became a book, and then we thought, well, geez, how are we going to make this into a movie? Everybody knows the ending. When we've figured out, if we got Tom Hanks, the world

would want to save Tom Hanks. I know. knew you did, I knew it, because I was like, why didn't they put, you know, like, wow, you are smart. Kevin Costner or somebody. Yeah, and even Kevin Costner, you want to see him come back. Yes. But there was somebody else I was thinking like, oh, they didn't put him in there and there's a good reason.

And I'm trying to think who it was. Like an action starry guy, right? Yeah, or like, um. Wasn't Stephen Segal, was it? No, that would be, you wanted to win an award for that movie. Yeah, it wasn't, yeah. Man, I'm trying to think, I even wrote down. I knew that you had to put Tom Hanks in there for that reason.

It'll come to me. That was the reason. We had a whole list of actors, including Kevin Costner and Tom Cruise and other action stars, and probably the one you're thinking about. And then I had this sort of moment where I thought, who does the world want to save the most? The guy that's not on the list, this guy named Tom Hanks. And that became our choice. And it was a good choice for all of us because the world did want to save him. And they became, they lived inside of his soul and had tremendous empathy for this. journey that was failed. So we end up making the movie with Tom Hanks. It is incredibly successful financially, so far exceeded what we ever thought. And it gets nine Oscar nominations. So now with the nine Oscar nominations, now we're in this new race, not just to make money, but now we're in the Oscar race. So it comes down to like the day before the Oscars. And everyone is saying, oh, you're going to win, Brian, you're going to win for Best Picture. You're going to win. Paul 13 is going to win. It's patriotic. It's intersecting with the NASA's anniversary. Oh, yeah. Yeah, fortunate.

And so a lot of things were very much going in our favor, the patriotism, the heart, the success. And Las Vegas odds, people, you're going to win. It's Apollo 13. A very famous financial wizard named Mike Milken said, I wanted to come over and see you. I want you to say eight words when you accept the award. I said, I can't even think like this, but it was like a lock we were winning. So I write this speech. I'm ready to say the speech because I think I'm positive. We're winning. So I have the speech in my tuxedo pocket. And the final envelope of the night is read by Sidney Poitier, the Oscar-winning actor that's very deliberate about how he communicates, slow and deliberate. He's got the envelope in his hand for the best picture.

and he got the envelope in his hand and he's going to open it and he's opening it very slowly. Of course. Which is torturous. Then I see, I think I see a B for Brian, imperceptible as it was, rolling off his lip. And I'm on the sixth row and I'm looking. And I get up to accept the Oscar because I, just all those signals and I'm imagining. And I get up to accept the Oscar and he says it. And she says, Braveheart.

So then I was so embarrassed. I walked back to my seat. And I turn around only for a second to sit down. And I see a guy say, loser. Oh, my God. Chairman of another studio does this to me. I thought, oh, why I'm such a loser. And then Jim Lovell, the actual astronaut,

reaches over Tom Hanks and Ron Howard to get to my wrist. And he says, I never made it to the moon either. there. And he put the whole thing in complete perspective. Yeah. Yeah. He never made it to the moon, but no one went, oh, you idiot, you try to go to the moon. He just got up before. He just had premature

celebration. That's really funny. And then, I don't know, Harvey Weinstein or somebody was like, hey, you're a loser. Yeah, yeah. That's the guy. Was it him? Yeah, he's now in prison. He's now predictable behavior. Yeah. He's now predicting. When a giant, when somebody does something really terrible in Hollywood,

just goes, probably Weinstein. Unless it happened after right now, because he's in prison. You're so funny. I got, okay. You know, your book's about human connection, but you post a lot of food photos for a guy. Yeah. A book about human connections.

Food videos. Food videos. Yeah, like I know what you have for breakfast every day. It does make sense, though. I do the show in person because the human element is so huge. It is. It is. Oh, yeah.

It's important. We're doing this together. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I do those food videos and, you know, I say stupid things, kind of silly things, but I'm always exposing what I'm eating, and as you know. And then only this Saturday I had, I have an amazing chef.

And I was eating Japanese style, Japanese food. And I had these amazing ribs, spare ribs. And I said, I call them Saturday ribs. And my friend Bob Eager, who goes under another one name says, oh, Saturday ribs, that's fascinating. Because there's nothing inventive of them. I'm calling something ribs, Saturday ribs. Yes, you're the guy who, you don't get to come up with. the names of the movies that you produce. It's somebody else's

child. Exactly. Bob Iger, an interesting guy. He is. He's a very, very accomplished. Yeah. He's accomplished as you can be. Yeah. I mean, he's the chairman of Disney or the president of it. No, chairman, CEO of Disney. And he has been, he just wrote a book himself called Ride of a Lifetime. I'm now selling his book. Yeah. But we're very, you know, like we're closest to friends and we, oddly, we both wrote books around the same time and released them only a week apart.

So my book, Face to Face is, was out first, and there's the one to purchase this moment. That's right. That's right. Don't worry about Bob. He can make everyone at Disney. Bob is doing fine. He's fine. Bob is great.

He's bought Marvel. He bought Pixar. He's bought everything. Now he bought Fox. He's got Disney stock. Don't worry about Bob. He's killing it. Yes.

When you started your career in Hollywood, you started networking your butt off right away. Yeah. Tell me about that because I know you got your first job at Warner Brothers in 74 as a legal clerk, which is really kind of fun. like a glorified sort of courier at that point, right? Yes. Clerk, like, clerk in air quotes. Yeah, exactly.

Like, here, you take this envelope and you bring it over there, but you made the best of that. Tell us what you did to make that a job that wasn't the soul-sucking. You almost didn't define it as demeaning as it really was. Right, yeah, I'm trying to cut you a little psych, but you turned it into, like, a really good opportunity. I turned this absolutely zero, absolutely a zero job into, like, an amazing opportunity. So it was a zero job, just like you said.

said, my job was just to deliver papers, Warner Brothers documents, if they even had happened. The first week, I just sat in an office this big, no windows, no, just looking around at the, actually, somebody caught me once. Jeff Katzenberg said, I saw you. I was sitting back at my chair, I was throwing pencils into the ceiling. Actually, a ceiling like this, because he brought it up to me only last night, because I had a book party, actually. And so he goes, remember when I met you? You were throwing pencils into the ceiling. Like trying to stick pencils into acoustic tiles by throwing them really hard. That's what I was doing.

I didn't even know you can do that. Well, I've never been that bored, I guess. No, I was at the height of boredom. And then eventually they said, okay, it's a week later. Deliver these papers to Warren Beatty. And I had to deliver papers to Warren Beatty, who was living and working out of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. And an assistant was down there and said, hand me the papers, punk, you know, that kind of thing. And I said, oh, oh, I made this up.

I was 22. Oh, the papers are legal documents that aren't valid unless I hand them directly to Mr. Beatty. Yeah. And the guy goes, give me the fucking papers. And so I said, I'm sorry, but they're invalid. And I would have to go back to the office to Warner Brothers in Burbank with the papers. All right. So then I got upstairs.

My job was now just to hand them to Beatty. But I turned it into like a conversation. Sure. And I was really enthusiastic and I lit up, I guess, and he lit up back. And I turned that moment transaction into like an hour conversation. Then I thought, I can do this all the time. I can do it every time I have to deliver papers. Right.

So I remember William Peter Blattie wrote the book, The Exorcist, Wow. Big best-selling book. I can name all these big names. But when I had no one to deliver something to, which quite often occurred, I would just do outgoing calls to people that I'd. admired in the movie business. I'd write a letter to Lou Wasserman. They didn't have emails the day. And then I'd follow up immediately with a phone call saying,

I just sent a letter to Mr. Wasserman. My name is Brian Grazer, and they'd hear my fresh, excited young voice from fresh out of college. And they always said yes. I mean, I did say, I work at Warner Brothers. This is unassociated with studio business, but I want to meet your boss for the following reason, and I guarantee you I do not want a job. In other words, I indemnified. Yeah, it was a very essential ingredient because I indemnified them from embarrassment. And the I do not want a job is important because that's what they're thinking is this person

wants something from me. They're just trying to be famous in Hollywood. And I'm so sick of that. And that's probably why these assistants didn't get fired for letting you talk to their boss in the first place. Although Warren Beatty probably fired his assistant if he talked to him for an hour after that. Maybe I could ask. Maybe ask him. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Brian Grazer. We'll be right right back.

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Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes down. downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Brian Grazer. It's a great speech, though, to come up with people to meet in the movie business. Because you kind of don't really get to do that very often. And I know you set a goal to meet one person, new person in the movie business every single day. Every single day, yeah.

And that's impressive. You know, I created, you have to create discipline, right? Yeah. And so I was good, even though, you know, again, dyslexia, found a way to sort of, I never saw it, but probably, you know, I found a way, you know, in junior high to read, and I was able to spell. Yeah. And until this day, I can so, of course, read. But it takes effort and discipline. So, but the bottom line is, sorry, I, I, um, I created this discipline of every day I would go meet a new person. And so that was just really a function of saying, I'm going to disrupt my comfort zone

every single day and put myself in a situation where I have to learn the language of physics, or I have to learn the language of whatever that is to meet somebody so I can communicate with them. Or you, I had to learn about your podcast. I didn't know everything about your podcast, but I realized all the really smart people that you've met. And I realized I think I was able to understand the theme of what you're trying to do. And so you come in, you're informed and you can be a good conversation. You can be interesting. I think the goal of life is to be interesting.

Because if you're actually interesting, then you'll be interested, and people will be interested in you. And so that makes the bridge of connection valuable. That's one of those kind of Dale Carnegie. Yeah, like be interested in other people to get them interested in you, right? Tom Hanks always used to say during Splash, here he is, today's version of Dale Carnegie. Oh, really? He was always teasing. Here he is, Dale Carnegie.

What question do you have today, Dale? Wow. Yeah, Tom Hanks making fun of you. That's a bucket list item for most people, I think. That was regular activity. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, he seems like a funny dude. He's a funny dude. Funny, smart dude.

Yeah, has to be. Yes. Ten minutes, though, with Lou Wasserman changed the way that you look at the movie business, right? Didn't he kind of, like, rip you to shreds and throw a legal pad and say, like, do some real work? Something along those lines, right? He did. I tried to meet Lou Wasserman. Everybody said yes.

Lou Wasserman said yes. I got him to say yes, because I cornered his assistant melody and many other people that worked on. And the minute he saw me, he realized, like, this is bullshit. Who is this kid? Who is this kid? So he said, sit still, or stand still. He wouldn't let me in the office. He went to his office, came back with a big legal tab, you know, his yellow legal tablets, and a pencil and said, take this. And he handed me the pad, and then the pencil, and he said, put the pencil to the

pad and it's worth more. It has greater value than they do as separate parts. Get out. You know, like beat it. So I got in the elevator feeling pretty embarrassed that he did in front a bunch of people, but it was the most valuable lesson I learned. I learned that you have to come in with something. You have to own something, meaning you have to give life to ideas. And so write them down, and then you own something. It doesn't even have to be perfect. Just don't say what's going on. Have someone say, what's going on? You go, nothing. Nothing. You can't say nothing. I'm just here to take up your time and your oxygen in your office. Take a selfie. You are super funny, yes. Well, the book's about curiosity.

To take his selfie. Lou Austin, like, hold on, let me get the camera guy, the one guy in the building with a camera. Yes. Curiosity is such an American or maybe Western value. I mean, it's really not. It is, by the way. Yeah. I can speak to that.

Yeah, let's do it. So we have, our company Imagine has Chinese investors. I was just going to bring up China. Yeah. And I told one of our early investors, they read my book and they loved the book. So I said, I would like to do a location-based entertainment that involves curiosity. But I don't want to go through that right now. And he looked at me like, not a good idea.

And I said, would you like my book? And then I got him to explain the word, what curiosity means in China, his interpretation to me. If curiosity is directed towards productivity, like is literally, it's not mean, It's not a casual, it's not a casual thing. It's curiosity is used to case build or build something that is a product of value. Right. That is tangible.

Then China likes that. But if it's a casual dalliance, if it's a hobby or flirtation, they don't like it. It's a negative word. Yeah. So it has to be very defined. Especially if you're questioning, should this be the way? that it is right now. This order we have. It doesn't make a whole lot of...

Right. Yeah. Or like curiosity about whether or not you're being governed in the best way possible. Then it becomes fatal in China and Russia. Or why are we doing facial recognition everywhere? Yeah. Oh, no. Why would we do that? Yeah. It's convenient for you to get arrested when we're looking for you. Yeah, that kind of thing. You have built your life around these curiosity conversations, which when I read it, I went like, oh, it's kind of like my podcast, only he's not recording it. In a way. Sort of like that. Yeah. Yeah.

I love that idea, though. Can you tell us what those are? I think that's useful for people that aren't just, you know, like podcasters or movie producers. More people should do it. More people should do it. And you don't have to go reach out and meet Jonah Salk that I did or Princess Dye or Michael Jackson or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. You don't have to, you can, you can, I've learned a lot from my Uber driver. Sure. I just recently from a Serbian, first of all, I didn't know he was Serbian, but I had to ask him. And he was a very big guy, and he was an Uber driver. And I said, started talking about martial arts, which I'm very interested in martial arts. I've done three different disciplines. And he said, oh, well, in Russia, we have one called Systema.

Yeah. And so I didn't know what that was. You do, apparently. And so I said, can I pay you to teach me this? And he did. Yeah, it's like kind of Kravmaga-esque. Yeah. And it's like very, it's based on reality. It's not based on like doing things in the corner by yourself. Yeah, you're using like, if you think about a wave in an ocean. Yeah. Yeah. So using the energy of that. I think they use it in the army over there. I'm sure they do. Special forces and stuff like that. You're good at, you'd be good to do this job.

What? Curiosity. This job. Oh, this job. Yeah. You're very good at this. Thank you. So, so basically with me, you said, how do I use it? So basically. Well, you had a cultural attache. This person was like your book. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. My. I book her. But I did it for 20 years before the cultural attache. Good. I still got a few years left before I hire my own. So I had 20 years of doing this on my own scrambling around and begging and grovelling, which I still do now because... It works. It works. That's how we got here. They finally said, listen, Veronica, if you don't book Brian, I'm going to keep whining to you every week. And she was like, fine. Yes. Yeah, that's what happened. You did it. Here we are. You're my Lou Wasserman, except I brought my own iPad, no legal pad required.

How do we get these meetings if we're not Hollywood, heavyweights or podcasters with a social media following or whatever? You just have to think about subjects that interest you. Well, first of all, yes. If nothing interests you at all, then this is not the thing you're doing. Remedial curiosity at times. But if you're interested in anything, architecture, how a building looks, and you realize, oh, I like the looks of that building. And then you say to yourself or so you say this, why is that building look that way? Oh, it's the architect.

Then, you know, it's not the design on the inside. It's the, it's Disney Hall. You go, why is Disney Hall look like that? Oh, it's this architect. Really? Who do you think that is? Oh, his name is Frank Geary. Wow, he must be a young guy.

No, he's 90. Interesting. Well, why don't I, I'd like to meet a guy that could do that at 90. I'd like to know what it's like to still be vital at 90. Plus, I'd like to know how he was able to come up with this sort of design. and is that a consistent design and all of his architecture? You have to like sort of iterate all these questions. No, and then you're a nobody.

Yeah. I still feel like, honestly, I still feel like I'm a nobody. Really? I mean, I have accomplishments, but I do feel, I feel like I have to scramble. How do I scramble? I have three assistants. They have to do stuff. They're supposed to make calls.

I don't let them make calls. I say, no calls. I'm making every call right from here myself. Every call is done by me. It's faster. It's more efficient. And guess what? I get to know the assistants. The assistants are going to rule the world.

And I've been doing that. If you think of the agency, creative artist agency. Sure. There's two guys. There's four guys, but two, they really run it. Someone named Richard Levitt and someone named Brian Lord. They used to work for people, and I would call their bosses, but I talked to them. Richard Lev would go, oh, you used to talk to me.

I worked for Fred Specter, you know, whatever. So it's really important to do that. First of all, it creates good karma. it activates your enthusiasm because you can't go, hey, can I talk to your boss? I mean, you could now, but it's right now. You go, hey, is Brian in? Brian, Lord, in that case, or I don't want to be fair about it, Ari Emanuel. Sure.

I call Ari's office, even if I just go, hey, is Ari in? They go, hey, sure, because then they want to connect you. They have something vested in it. There was a director. I was trying to get approved by universal pictures. And so I called the boss, the executive. I called his, I said, hey, is someone so in? And they said, well, he's leaving. I said, he needs to have, before he leaves the country, he needs to have a meeting with this one director. Now he's got no time. I go, please, he's got to meet these directors. Please, please, please. Who are they? I say the names.

And the assistant goes, we love them. All of a sudden, I got, it. it became, okay, it's Thursday afternoon. We showed up, they proved them. They're now directing Friday Night Lights. Yeah, wow. The movie, the new movie again. Yeah, so don't outsource your networking, basically. Because a lot of people do that.

They go, oh, I don't want to do that anymore. So they hire someone, you know, for 20 bucks an hour. Well, you're laughing because that's twice as much as you pay the person, right? Yeah. That is like, that end outsourcing your networking. Yeah. Yeah, it's very true. I'm actually quite frankly given, I mean, I understood it in the day when people use the assistants to make the call.

Yeah. Jump right into a speaker box and they could sound like Wizard of Oz, you know, and like some big deal. I'm surprised that Hollywood doesn't do that. Tech guys do that. They don't use assistants to make calls, really. No. I mean, Brian Chesky, who's a very good guy who created Airbnb who actually stole my assistant name. Yeah, I'll leave it alone.

But I became friends with him because he stole my assistant. But I was okay because she didn't go to a producer in Hollywood. He didn't go to Jerry Bruchheimer. He's better than you, Brian. He went to Brian Chesky. Who's created Airbnb? That makes sense. So you would have taken it personally if she had gone to somebody else in the same niche?

Yeah. I would have said, geez, what happened? What's going on? Yeah. I can see that, though, right? Because we do get, we're competitive with people that are kind of within that magnetism range of where we are in our same orbit. But if somebody goes and works for somebody on the other side of a totally different industry, It's hard to compare.

You're too different. All my superstars are people that got yelled up by Scott Rudin. I take all them. He's really talented, really gifted, tremendous sense of quality. Ironically, Scott Rudin and I both worked for the guy that yelled. There was a guy, Edgar J. Cherrick, he was the boss, and Scott and I were equals as two guys that were just punks trying to get up in the business. Two punching bags.

Yeah. Well said. Yeah. So you met Joan. Salk, was that like one of your first big sort of curiosity conversations? Yeah. And you puked on him, right? Yeah.

Yeah. At least you puked on a doctor. Yeah, and I know. That was a good news. So I was so nervous. I was very excited about meeting my childhood hero, Dr. Jonas Salk, created the polio vaccine. But it took two years to finally get someone to agree for Jonas Salk that I could meet him. And I had so much excitement.

I had so much preanticipatory excitement and anxiety. that when I approached him, why you're laughing, I approached him to say, Mr. Sal, I kind of projectile vomited. Oh, my God. But he is a doctor. Right. And so I laid down, he wanted me to lay down. I was feeling faint anyway.

So, and he summoned the glass of orange juice and just the comfort of his hand on my head. I was back to life. That's quite an impression. He probably remembered that for a long time, I would imagine. Because then he said he really liked me. We started to see, I did curiosity conversations with he, Jonah Saul, until the sort of end of his life. Wow. We became friends for the remainder of his life.

He's like, just sit three feet away. Here's a air sickness bag for the next time. Yeah, I think if somebody was so nervous that they puked on me, I don't know if I'd be like, when's our next meeting, you know? Good for him, though. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Clearly a caring guy. Yeah. If anyone, yeah, I wonder how people.

Let's do this on the phone, can me? Yeah, we'll do their interview remotely next time. Thanks for puking on me, Jordan. Yes. You have worked with a lot of amazing people over the years. You know, Spike Lee, Denzel, Washington, Russell Crow, heaps of others. How do you manage strong personalities like that? I almost feel like you can't.

You know, you can't really be like, Denzel, this is ridiculous. Behave yourself. Not that you would have to with him, but I don't think you could if you needed to. No, you can't. You can't do that. So you just have to hope that they're cool to work with, that they work well? Your communication system with very accomplished people like Denzel or Tom Hanks or Eddie Murphy or Russell crow or I could go on. You have to have a communication system where you're warm and honest. So they feel

your heart. When people feel your heart, they're rooting for you. They're, you know, they don't want to be on bad behavior. But there are times that they all will, you know, would become impatient with some part of the process and you have to fix something. That's inevitable. And the way I think I did that was, even if I'm afraid, I appear to be fearless. So you have to appear to be fearless. And when you appear to be fearless, then you can be loose. And if you're loose, you're honest. And it's a better chance you are to, like, you know, hit that ball, you know, make it work. And so I try to be loose and open-minded and know that I'll say, absolutely know that I will say things that are mistakes that they're going to, could pray upon. And, and, you know,

and know what I'm going to say when they do, which is like, hey, I make mistakes, but my intention is the following. Always know what your intention is with somebody. Always know whether it's a movie or a startup company. You have to have intentionality. What is that intentionality? Because the execution, there'll be so much fallibility involved in that execution. You have to be prepared to know what you intend to achieve and be able to state that and evangelize even when things are off course. That makes sense. I suppose that way, it doesn't make sense for them to pounce on you if they feel like you're being vulnerable with them that you're not trying to maintain an air of perfection. Yeah. In trying to maintain an error of perfection, you're going to go wrong. You're going to say something that's not true. Then they'll ding you for that. By acting like you're perfect,

that's almost arrogance, which they're really allergic to them. Right. Yeah. Artists are truth detectors. If you just show your truth, if you're intelligent and you're well-read and you just show your truth, then usually they will be attracted to that. That makes sense, because I was wondering how you build trust with people that are always targets for being taken advantage of. You have to signal that it's okay for them to trust you, but these are people where like, I mean, I'm sure Jim Carrey or Denzel has a million fake friends all over the place, and they just are immediately guarded, even by somebody that's working with them because they're like, what does this person want? That's got to be their default reaction.

It is. Yes, yeah. No, that's for sure. It's actually got to be quite isolating for people like that. So if you can show that you understand that, there's probably some level of sympathica there. Yeah. I'm tempted to tell this Jim Carrey story, so being tempted means I will. Yeah.

So basically, Jim Carrey, we, I produced Lyer Lyer, which is a massive hit and great for me and great for Jim. It was a win-win. I always try to go for win-win. instantly. I don't try to convince anyone of even an hour with me if it's a win-lose. If it's me trying to get something off you, you know, and I know if it's transactionally oriented and that person doesn't know that it's transactually oriented, then there's deceit in the conversation. That's how I see it. Yeah. They're keeping score and you're not. So then they get mad when you don't do what they want you to do. And you're like, what the hell? I thought we were just having

lunch. And they're like, I took you on to lunch. I wanted you to read my script. Ripty prick. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's really true. With Jim Carrey, I'd already a couple of, two giant hits with him. I did The Grinch and Stole Christmas and Liar Liar and then I had one other movie. And, you know, he's hard to work with, but he's a genius.

And he got really mad at somebody on the set and he kicked over the monitors and it scared everybody. Like the TV? Like the screens? Yeah, those screens where there's director chairs and you're watching the monitors and he kicked them over. And it was like a temper tantrum kind of thing. But he's so brilliant and I want the best for him, of course. But when he did that, I just, my impulse was to grab him and hug him. And even though he was really, he can be intimidating because he's physically big and physically very strong. Is he?

You wouldn't think. No, he's big. He has big shoulders and big arms and he's physically really strong because he gets adrenalineized quickly. Like he goes, he can get hyper-adrenalized. And when you're hyper-adrenalized, you're very strong. You've lift cars up and stuff like that. Yeah, that's, yeah. So he's sort of that person. And so I just hugged him and I said, you know, Jim, you just got to be happy. You're the biggest movie star in the world right now. You have to be happy with that. And it was a really touching moment. And he just sort of gained his footing, you know, like rebalanced and became a good day for it. I mean, he turned the day. day around for everybody. You're like, then the second part of that, I guess, would be, and those were $20,000 for taking them out of your check. Yeah, he strikes me as a kind of guy who, along with a lot of other artists, who no matter what, they will never be really happy with what's happening in their life. That's interesting. I think the one artist, I mean, there's many artists, but Tom Hanks is happy.

He seems like he's happy. That's probably why other people like him so much. Yeah. And I think Jim Carrey is brilliant and insightful, but he's brilliant and insightful in the way where you go, wow, that comes from a lot of pain. Like, when you're watching him talk about things on YouTube, you're just like, that's not a guy who's like hanging out with his family and fun. Tom has the right dosage of pain to cause him to want to avoid it, you know, avoiding pain or shame. So he's the right amount. The balance is right. And motivates him. He's very, very perfectionistic. So he'll seem like, hey, really regular guy. He's just, definitely not a regular guy. He's, you know, has really supersonic skills. Like, not only as

an actor, but as a curator of picking ideas that are right for him, discarding the ones that aren't, just dealing with his, I mean, managing choices and the things he does on CNN. I mean, he's very extraordinary as a, not just an actor, but a direct, he does all, every job. He knows what it feels like. He's just, yeah, he's a magical personality. But this is your show. This is your episode of the show here. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you keep in touch and stay connected to people that are hyper-scheduled like that? You know, like, I have so much. Oh, yes.

You are so busy. I'm super busy. It's a constant struggle to be like, let me just give this person a call. They're not going to answer. They're freaking in a meeting. They're always in a meeting. They're always doing something. Yeah.

So how do I reach people when they're super busy? Yeah. How do you stay in? You don't even have to reach them. Maybe you're just staying in touch with them in some other way. Like for me, I text a lot of people because I know they'll eventually read it when they're like getting into the power going to the next place. But they don't want to be on a phone.

Well, this blows Veronica's mind, my wife, who you referred to. Right. I will call everybody because then they see the phone ring. And they almost always answer the phone because they're used to this consistent pattern of getting emails or texts or WhatsApp. So if you call them, they think, oh, wow, this must be important. Yeah, this is important. This is an aberration. This could be interesting to me, you know, like they feel like it could be.

And so I call them. I make it short, but I talk. And so that's the key. You make it short. Got to make it short. Because when I see the phone, right. When people call me and I, they go, hey, and the minute they do the, hey, like that, okay, now what's happening? Yeah.

And I don't think I'm better. I just want to know what the point is. Yeah. I want to know what's our story on this call. Yeah. And so get to the points that we could both be engaged in it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

You're training people to pick up the call because they know it's going to be five minutes and not 55 minutes. Yeah, they know Brian understands time. Yeah, that makes sense. That's important. to signal. I think a lot of people try to be small-talkie because it seems more polite, but it's a waste of time. It's a waste of time. And nothing fun comes out of small-talkie. Now. I mean, this morning I call my friend Jimmy Iveen. He's brilliant guy. He's created many music companies. Anyway, he created beats that became beats by Dre at Thrable. Oh, okay. Oh, he's someone you should have on your show. I will take you up on that.

Oh, my God. He's a master. Basically, at 20 years old, 20 and a half years old, because people go, wow, why He's he a billionaire? I go, why is he a billionaire? I'll tell you why. He was sweeping floors in a movie, in a music studio. He found a way to become the assistant to the assistant of John Lennon as an engineer. He shows me a picture of John Lennon and he at 20 and a half years old, and he's important to John Lennon.

He earned it. So these kind of people are so interesting to me, where they're earning it from the very beginning and becoming experts. Yeah. And it far exceeded their 10,000 hours, their outlier hours. Yeah, yeah. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Brian Grazer. We'll be right back after this.

Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Brian Grazer. You've said that ideas, you feel like ideas come from all corners of you. your brain. And I'm wondering what you mean by that, because I would love to sort of show people who

also feel that way that there's nothing wrong with the way that they think. Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, that's an old-fashioned measurement tool. It's like thinking about the way I think, the way my thought is measured is through an IQ test, and that's it singular like that. So now we've proved that, well, certainly curiosity is, if you use it, you learn a lot, and there's no, there's a randomness involved in it. And so you're just, you're just, trusting the randomness, and that's a system unto itself. So my system, which you could say, oh, that's a singular system or discipline, it's allowing for the randomness.

Because I have seen, like in the case of both either a beautiful mind or the case of Apollo 13, it all accessed my insights that enabled me to have value to both of those movies that became huge successes. came from a woman named Veronica Denegray that I met in 1985. So basically in 1984, I thought, wow, I think I want to meet this musician named Sting. Because Sting was like a school teacher in England, and all of a sudden he's now a rock star. I thought, what is that guy's journey? He was kind enough to grant me a meeting.

I got to meet him. And a year later, after that meeting, he said, you know, I'm having a barbecue. Why don't you come over? He'd just done the amnesty tour, and a woman in Veronica Denegray was there. She had been tortured in Chile under the Dictict of Pinocet. Pinotchet, exactly. I said, how did you survive? That became a long story.

That long story got me focused on how people survive when they're being tortured, and they live in an alternate reality, another story. So if you think about thought, our present thought would be this. She knew she had to redial that present thought because that present thought was experiencing unpredictable pain every day. So she created another story with another thought system, and within that story and thought system, she could survive this 18 months of unpertual prank, pain. Which, of course, if you use those insights and transport them to a beautiful mind as schizophrenic, you realize that's the cinematic way to begin the movie, is through an alternate reality, because it then makes it a thriller, not, you know, just a drama. Yeah, that does make sense.

Was that too circuitous? No, I think it makes sense. You've said that your curiosity helps you make movies, and that sounds like what you're talking about, right? You take just as much with your talk with an activist, Veronica De Negre, as you do with the astronaut, and they both go into Apollo 13. Yes, exactly. In a different way. Or a beautiful mind. Yeah, I just think if you're thoughtful, if you're a thoughtful person and you're not lazy and you create disciplines, any kind of disciplines, just saying hello to somebody is a discipline, looking at them and just saying hi. And then you don't have to be an active using curiosity as actively as I.

As long as you have a discipline to improve yourself. And the only thing you have to do to improve yourself is disrupt your comfort zone. Put yourself in situations that are kind of like this sink or swim survival. You know, like, I'm going to be smart on this show or I'm not going to be smart on the show. I'm going to be the best I can be on the show. I know I'm, see, I'm failing at this. But I'm okay feeling. But the point is, is you have to institute some disciplines upon yourself and use those disciplines to grow.

You've said that learning from someone in front of you is better than sex, better than success. And I love that because that's, you know, I usually get into like the flow state when I'm doing an interview that's going well. I totally agree with it. I think if I say this conversation is better than sex, that might come across a little creepy, but I'm fine with that. emotional curiosity is something that you talk about in the book as well. You connect feelings and mindset to someone else's work and then try to bring it into your work. This might be tricky, but what does that mean? How do you do that? Okay, so let's use that Frank Gehry example of meeting this architect Frank Geary, which I did do, by the way. Yeah. I pulled that randomly, but nothing is random, I suppose. So I know that I can't talk to a master architect in depth about architecture, because I can only learn so much.

on YouTube or, you know, reading books or, you know, and you only have a certain amount of time you can read a book. And now we all know how to study quickly. There's lots of methods to study quickly. There was a previous architect that I didn't want to meet any architects. It was very early in my curiosity conversation was about 25 years ago. And somebody, my cultural attache keeps telling me, meet this architect named Rem Cool House, who's a master architect himself. I said, I get it. He's a master. I don't want to meet an architect. Bottom line, he says to me, this guy, my attaché, says, why? Because I think it's an architecture is a manipulation of space as beautiful as it could be. It has nothing to do with feelings or emotion. He said,

I don't know. I think you could be wrong. You should meet him. So I meet Rem Kulas. The first thing he says, I say hello, he says, architecture is like a living organism. because I wouldn't understand the big picture. It's like a living organism. And you have to think of architecture as a living organism because living organisms are going to be flourishing or not flourishing inside of this shell, this architectural shell.

And unless you care about, centrally care about people's feeling and flow as you brought up flow, like, you know, where you're creating environments that are inspirational to human beings, that is the goal. And so I didn't even realize it. So I had it completely wrong. And it was funny to me because I would have never bet that an architect would talk about feelings or emotionality or describe it through architecture through imagine a living organism.

You're taking these insights that are seemingly disconnected from your work. Yes. And then through these curiosity conversations or podcasts or other input sources, then you take them and they trickle into your work. And do you credit a lot of your success and your work? work because of the outside input that most people just don't ever get? Yes, I definitely do. I credit all of these curiosity conversations and just in my most recent book, face to face, it's saying yes instead of no. So when you walk past people to get to your office or the parking or the receptionist that's not even your receptionist, you're saying yes,

I see you as a human being. And you go, hey, that always, it lives in a constellation of events in your consciousness that somehow then might seep into your subconscious state, but it gives you a competitive edge over other people. It gives you a tip on the jump ball because someone might say something in a conversation years later and you go, oh, wait a second, I remember it. The receptionist or the Uber driver talked about systema and, you know, it's just like all these dots connect. So the more open you are to all of the dots and the constellation of dots that are available to you, that you continue to expand upon, the more opportunity you have.

It makes sense. It goes along with what you said, and I can't remember if this is the first or the second book, where you said instincts have no value unless they are informed. Yes, I know. And I wish more people would listen to that because everyone now is like, well, my intuition says. And I'm like, you're into it.

You're in your fifth, like, marriage with a guy who's horrible. Your kids are estranged. Like, I don't know if you should be listening to your intuition. You should probably stop. The opposite. Why don't you read a book? Look, you'll see somebody. Help.

It's like when George Gistands on Seinfeld, he goes, I'm going to do the opposite of what George would normally do. Do you remember that? You ever see that? And then, of course, everything starts working out in his life. Exactly. It's like, it just makes sense. It's very funny.

This is how we get better instincts, right? We inform our instincts not by, like, going to study something in depth necessarily. Yeah, this sounds very categorical. But in that space, the helicopter parents, you know, which, you know, I might be classified as one of them, you know, parents that really care, have enough money, they care about their kids, they overly protective. They say, trust your instincts. But if your kid doesn't read a book, don't trust your instincts. Read some books. Read something. Meet people, learn. But it's like, in show business, it's very personified, magnified. Because people go, why do you like that actor or why do you

like that story? Because I trust my instinct. But your instincts aren't informed. You don't know anything. You're an attorney. You know, get your instincts or not. Yeah. Yeah. Your creative instincts are, you went to law school. You should not be... Yeah, read Malcolm Gladwell's book on Outliers. Do that and then come back and start trusting your instincts. Right, exactly. And I mean, Malcolm's latest book, he was on the show last week. Oh, wow. Malcolm's latest book is all about, hey, your instincts? Probably totally wrong. People get shot because you think your instincts are correct. It's not really a good look.

You know? Yeah. It's true, my opinion. This went pretty well, in my opinion, Brian. I know you've got to go in a few minutes, but my fear on this show, my fear on the show is having a situation like you had with Isaac Asimov. You want to tell us about that? I love that story. Okay, so basically this. We're both the same person. He and I are both curious people, and I was a very curious person, and I seek to meet Isaac Asimov, as you would seek to meet somebody. Sure. Isaac Asimov was the leading writer and probably the most prolific and most valid writer of science fiction. I mean, he had like dozens and dozens and dozens of books. He had so many so much work. He wrote like a book a month.

It's unbelievable. Yeah, and they weren't even all science fiction. He had like books on, he had textbooks and stuff. It's just an incredible guy. So I wanted to meet Isaac Asimov because of all these extraordinary accomplishments because he was the esteemed Isaac Asimov. And so I flew across the country, coach

seat, because I wasn't Brian Grazer then. And I was the beginning of Brian Grazer. Meany Brian Grazer. And I meet with Isaac Asimov and his wife at the Rich Carlton Bar, Central Park in the bar. I'm remembering this.

And I sit down with he and his wife, and they both order ginger rails. And his wife says, I do a quick exchange with both of them, starting off like I normally start up, thinking I'm smart. And she says, Isaac, you know what?

I don't think he knows your work well enough. And, you know, like robotics and stuff. I think we should get up and go right now. In front of you. Right in front of me. They're having this conversation in front of me. And so Isaac said, you know, like...

You're the boss. Pretty much. You're the boss. In under five minutes, they just got up and left. They just left. They said, we're leaving. And they got up and they walked away. I couldn't do it.

That was the end. What did you take from that? First, it was really embarrassing. And I felt like that was wrong on them. And it was... But then I later thought months, no, years later, but they could have been right. I didn't know enough.

And, you know, they could have suffered through it or we could have found commonality. But in order to write a book a month, you have to use your time wisely. And she said, she could detect, I didn't know enough about what he did for a living. And that's not respectful enough. And we're leaving.

Yeah. So I try to be well researched. I envy people who can just do that. Oh, yeah. I mean, how many meetings have you sat through where you're like, I knew this two minutes in was going to be a waste of time. Many. Many.

Especially in Hollywood. Yes. Many. How many times in a beautiful minded people have to remind Russell Crow to just like, hey, you're American, speak with an American accent? Because kind of like through the movie, he's just like not going to do that. He just talks in his own way. His own way, yeah. Yeah.

He's got like a little accent. You're like, oh? I don't think there's a Boston accent. Well, I think he'd just won an Oscar, so that made it tough. Yeah. You can't really be like, hey. He hired him a pre-oscure, and then he won an Oscar for gladiator. So now we were on, we were really on our toes.

Yeah, yeah, you can't really. Yeah, can't argue, go, you don't know what you're doing, Russell, you can't say that. Yeah, yeah, he can just do him. And that's what I meant, I think, with the managers of artists. And he was very good, by the way. He was, he was great. But he did have that thing you just said. It must be hard to take the, you see like little gladiator

kind of mannerisms and the professor at that point? I mean, it must be hard to switch cold turkey and jump into another character. Yeah, it's probably, well, that is probably hard. Because in order to be convincing as a character, you do have to live in that character. You're not just memorizing. It's not a TED Talk or something. So you end up with like schizophrenic gladiator genius.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Kind of a weird mix. Kind of a weird mix to be around for, I don't know, 100 hours a week or however long it takes to shoot a movie. Yeah. That's a long time. Brian, thank you very much. This is a really fun show.

Great big thank you to Brian Grazer. A link to the book will be in the show notes. It's called Face to Face, the Art of Human Connection. There's a video of this interview as well on our YouTube. channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. And of course, there are also worksheets for each and every episode

so you can review what you've learned today here from Brian Grazer. Those are at Jordan Harbinger.com in the show notes. We also now have transcripts for each episode and those can be found in the show notes as well. We're teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course,

which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The problem with kicking the can down the road, doing it later, putting it down for a minute. You can't make up for lost time when it comes to relationships and networking. The number one mistake is not digging the well before you get thirsty. So make sure you build those relationships much like Brian did, so when you need them, you can hit the big time. They'd take just a few minutes per day.

I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. Find it all for free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us, and you'll be in great company. Speaking of building relationships, find me on social media at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And this show, it's created in association with Podcast One. This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, Jason DeFilippo, edited by Jace Sanderson. Show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

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and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like podcast? If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation, something that'll make you stop mid-dishwashing and go, wait, what that actually happened? You got to subscribe to What Was That Like?

It's real people telling them, most surreal moments of their lives and they're not just giving you the highlights. They're walking you through it from the inside as the person who actually lived it, which means you're basically getting a front row seat to the chaos. One episode is about Scott getting locked up in a foreign jail for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, Scott. Another is Sue's parachute failing. Wow, I'm surprised she was around to tell that story. And then there's Michael who was stabbed on a bus, which makes your commute instantly feel a little bit more relaxing. Do anything you think? So if you want to hear some wild and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out what was that like.

Every story is verified. Their site even has photos so you know even the most bizarre stuff you're hearing is somebody's real life. Listen to what was that like on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever app you're using right now. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on a on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something

you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.